Alan dropped a couple of diggers off in Waney, then took his Land Rover north and east across the county line into Lincolnshire. After half an hour bouncing across subsiding Fenland roads he arrived at the bungalow he currently called home, in the little village of Tubney. There were one or two picturesque houses in Tubney, but this wasn’t one of them. A couple of nights ago a friend, who’d come home with him after the pub, had described it as: ‘Pokey rooms downstairs and bugger-all upstairs.’ That about summed it up. Like most 1930s detached houses, it had once possessed a garden, but the last tenants had been scrap dealers and had used it to store old lorry engines which had leaked oil and diesel everywhere; so the garden grew nothing, and on warm days the entire place smelled like a garage. Still, it was very cheap.
Even the bloody phone smelled of oil. He hesitated before dialling. Was this such a good idea, after all? He had first met Detective Inspector Richard Lane when they were both on the Forensic Archaeology MA course at Saltaire, just over ten years ago. Although he was twelve years older than Alan, they’d become good friends for the two years they were together on the course. By then Lane was already a successful career policeman, and it was his idea to do the MA, if only to find out what the new, and much-heralded, branch of forensic science could achieve. As he said at the time, there was little point in employing extra staff or consultants, if the police themselves had no idea what they could learn from them. But once he’d begun the course, he realised his lack of excavating experience put him at a big disadvantage. So he was delighted when he became friendly with Alan.
Alan was on the staff of the course and had been employed to oversee the fieldwork side of things. Although it was just a temporary contract it had come in the nick of time: he’d been out of work for a couple of months after failing to complete his PhD dissertation. People said he was pig-headed and should have made the changes the external examiner demanded. Instinctively Alan disliked the man: Dr Peter Flower. Posey and superior: every inch a clever academic and up with all the in-vogue trends, like post-structuralism. He wanted Alan to provide a ‘relativist epi-overview’. He said it didn’t have to be very long. He even pleaded with him. But no. Alan was damned if he would. And whose bloody thesis was it, anyhow: Alan’s or Posey Peter’s?
So he lost his grant and his postgraduate studentship. He was out of work. By then it was July and all commercial digging jobs had been filled. Frankly, the outlook was bleak and he was about to start stacking supermarket shelves when an old friend at Saltaire, hearing of his plight on the grapevine, offered him a temporary position on the Forensics MA course. To someone with Alan’s experience there was nothing to it. Just the basics: trowelling, laying out trenches, section-drawing, soil-sampling, surveying, GPS – all familiar stuff. He didn’t exactly feel stimulated by the course. Frankly he’d much rather have been out on a real site getting his hands dirty. But he had enough sense to know when to bite the bullet. Then he’d met Richard Lane and things changed.
Their lifestyles were so different: his chaotic, the policeman’s organised and efficient. But as they worked and talked they began to grasp the point of it all. It wasn’t just about clever scientific techniques. Arresting criminals. Bang to rights. That sort of stuff was fine on TV. No, it was bigger, more fundamental than that: why some things mattered and others didn’t. Good and evil: basic stuff that makes us human. Why people did what they did. Every patch of land told a different story, and they were all about people. Best of all, they enjoyed sorting out the puzzle together.
Soon they were both working on various digs during vacations and on weekends. As they trowelled together on their hands and knees, Alan was surprised at the policeman’s natural ability and he took much trouble teaching him the nuts and bolts of practical excavation. Rather to his surprise Lane too discovered that although Alan often operated by instinct – by ‘feel’ as he called it – he also had an extraordinarily tenacious analytical mind. He wouldn’t let problems die. He was like a terrier and always managed to sort them out. And he was usually proved right, much to Lane’s begrudging admiration.
After the course ended Lane tried to persuade him to train as a full-time police consultant, which he resisted out of that very same instinctive reaction. Lane tried to make him change his mind. But soon gave up. No, Alan was a hopeless case: he shied away from permanent commitment and didn’t like the idea of working with non-archaeological material. He seemed hooked on the special appeal, the magic even, of old things and long-lost times. They stirred his imagination like nothing else and he couldn’t set them aside. For Alan, past times held the key to the present, but at a more personal level than mere history; his work was a necessity, not a hobby or luxury.
Directly after Saltaire, Lane had been transferred to the Cambridgeshire force. In those days they maintained contact, although not closely – the odd drink at weekends. There’d been a series of unpleasant murders in and around Whittlesey, a small Fenland town east of Peterborough. Alan was able to advise them about Fen farms, Fen farmers and their hired help. He made several scene-of-crime visits, all of which brought in welcome consultancy fees. In the end they never caught the murderer, which didn’t surprise Alan, who was far from certain that the killings were the work of a single individual. Yes, there were consistencies, but they were too obvious. Alan had the strong sense that something else, probably rather more sinister, had been going on. The press, on the other hand, were completely convinced – as indeed were the police – at least as soon as the first stories began to hit the headlines. Then it all fizzled out, not that anyone in the area seemed to care much. Life continued as before. Alan had been pissed-off, then he came to see that human beings can only cope with so much trauma on their own doorstep. Easier to turn your back, and pretend nothing had happened.
A couple of years passed. Alan and Lane kept loosely in touch: the odd phone call or drink when either of them was nearby. Then things got worse. Like the start of their friendship it was unexpected: Alan had always suspected that the police’s approach to the Whittlesey murders was a result of political pressure from higher up. A case of political correctness, as all the talk at the time pointed to an immigrant gang. Several were known to be working in the region, but none had yet killed; their thefts were all about pink farm diesel, heating oil or scrap metal. Anyhow, one night, after a few too many beers, he told Lane as much. He knew as he said it, it hadn’t gone down well. And he was right. Lane’s eyes had said as much: OK smart-arse I bet you wouldn’t have done any better – and at least I’ve got a career. So the scene-of-crime visits and police consultancies stopped, and that was that. Just eight years ago – shortly before the Flax Hole dig.
Alan fired up his computer and googled Richard Lane. It didn’t take long to find him. An image of his old friend stared steadily out of the screen at him: Lane had been promoted to Detective Chief Inspector and was now with Leicestershire CID. Destined to be a high flyer, Alan thought as he stared back into the expressionless gaze. You’ve learned how to do a mugshot, he thought. Give nothing away, just stare down the lens. But there were a few signs: shorter sideburns, greying hair and just the hint of a double chin. Alan smiled: Lane’s wife Mary was one of the best cooks he’d come across. Lucky sod.
To the world at large Alan’s ‘career’ hadn’t been flying at all. He’d managed to screw-up or turn down several offers of long-term jobs. He didn’t want them. At least that’s how he rationalised it. In reality he couldn’t face getting on the ladder he’d seen so many of his friends start to climb. But it never went very high and they all ended up as project managers in commercial units, sitting in front of computer screens and talking to suited women in HR. They grew fat guts and endlessly droned on about how they missed ‘being in the field’. Like hell, he thought: they couldn’t have survived a month out in a gravel quarry in February. They’d lose weight fast: freeze their balls off.
So he’d drifted into being a freelance site officer, supervising one dig after another, winter, summer, autumn and spring. Not exactly high-flying, but he was proud of what he was doing, even so. He knew he was the best and enjoyed the challenge of surviving on his wits. It was like other things in life; he liked the danger, the ever-present and lurking precariousness of it. It was better than growing old.
Now he found he was standing in the bungalow’s single empty corridor, looking down at the phone. The newspaper cutting lay beside it.
He took a deep breath, and dialled a number in Leicester.
It barely rang before a brisk voice answered.
‘Hello, Richard Lane here.’
‘It’s Alan…’
No response.
‘Alan Cadbury?’
‘Oh, hello Alan, it’s been a while.’
‘Yes, it has.’
Alan realised there was nothing for it but to get straight to the point.
‘So, the reason I’m calling… Yesterday I read something in an oldish copy of the local rag about one of those “honour” killings. It seems the man that did it, Ali Kabul, came from Leicester.’
‘That’s right. It was a big case. You must have heard about it? Every newspaper, let alone TV and radio, was full of it.’
‘No, sorry, missed it. The last few months have been a bit frantic. I’ve been digging everywhere. And you know what it’s like, you don’t see papers very often when you’re in the field.’
‘It was very high profile,’ Lane continued, ‘Not just here in Leicester, but nationally.’
Was there a patronising edge to Lane’s tone, or was Alan just being over-sensitive? He pushed on regardless.
‘The clip I saw mentioned the killing happened at Flax Hole Depot. That’s the place off the Market Harborough Road, at the city end, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And there’s a big café near it? Mehmet’s, named after the owner?’
‘Alan, something tells me you haven’t got back in touch after all this time just to discuss the local geography.’
Alan tightened his grip around the telephone, resisting the urge to slam it back into the cradle and walk away.
‘I think I must have been there when the killing happened.’
Alan thought he could hear a sharp intake of breath. But when Lane spoke his voice was calm and professional.
‘February 2002?’
‘I was running a dig there. I’d set up a small contracting partnership with a colleague. We were part of a sub-contract for a larger job run by the City Archaeological Unit. Then, at the pre-planning stage, the City Archivist found documentary evidence for a flax-processing workshop complex there in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Flax sites are rare in the east. So the project was delayed, while we did an assessment, followed by excavation. It turned out to be quite important.’
‘Sounds fascinating, Alan, but I don’t quite see how this is relevant.’
‘The Depot was being completely redesigned, rebuilt and modernised by the owners.’
‘The Kabuls?’
‘That’s right. And that’s what I need to talk to you about. ’
There was a pause. Alan could visualise Lane, slowly passing his hand across his face, the way he did when he was weighing up his words before he spoke.
‘I wasn’t involved in that case. Not the sort of thing I normally deal with. We’ve officers with more specialist knowledge who deal with crimes like forced marriages and honour killings. If you have anything to report then I suggest you contact…’
Alan cut in, he wouldn’t be shrugged aside, not until he’d said what he had to say.
‘It’s nothing specific. More of a hunch.’
Alan thought, for a second, he could hear Lane swallow back a laugh.
‘Ah, the Alan Cadbury hunch. I remember it well.’
There was a warmth to his voice, a softening. Less the formal police detective more the old friend whom he had knelt beside, in a cold, wet trench, both trowelling with fingerless gloves and frozen fingers.
‘The thing is, while we were digging we were visited by two teenagers, both Turkish-looking. Both bright and intelligent. Brother and sister, I’d guess. They were also about the right age, and I’m fairly sure the boy was called Ali – although it was seven years ago and I never got to see him after the dig. I didn’t find out the girl’s name, but she was wearing a green school uniform.’
‘That’s the High School.’
‘I’m sure I’d recognise her face if I saw it again. Very pretty. Her brother was good-looking too. Any chance you could get me pictures of them?’
There was a pause before Lane replied.
‘I assume you have a good reason for all this?’
Alan reflected for a moment. Best not to give too much away at this stage.
‘Yes, Richard, I think I do.’
‘I can download them tonight, but I’d rather not trust them to email. Better if I showed them to you here. I’m on duty tomorrow, so why not come over Sunday afternoon?’
Alan had forgotten this about Lane. He took his time weighing up the evidence, working out the best course of action – but once he decided to act, that was it.
‘To your house?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘Great, Richard, that’s really great. Thank you.’
But Alan was speaking into empty air, Lane had already hung up.
Alan put the phone down and looked out of the window. It was only mid-August and already the nights were drawing in. Across the open fields he could see a man with a pitchfork get out of an old tractor parked alongside a reed-filled dyke. Then he climbed into the dyke, reaching into the back pocket of his overalls. Alan knew what was coming next, as he’d helped his dad do the same thing hundreds of times when he was a lad. As he expected the flames soon appeared, fanned by a light evening breeze, licking along the sides of a dyke as the dead reeds and rushes caught fire: an eerie vision in the half-light.
Well, Alan thought as he folded up the newspaper article and put it back in his pocket, that could have gone worse. A lot worse.